Bloodshed on the road to Ivory Coast presidency puts long-term peace at risk

Pro-Gbagbo militiamen from the Young Patriots fight with forces loyal to internationally recognised Ivory Coast president Alassane Ouattara in the Plateau district of Abidjan. Photograph: Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP/Getty Images

The battle for Abidjan finally appears to be going in favour of Alassane Ouattara, the internationally acknowledged winner of the 2010 election in Ivory Coast, but the bloody manner of his victory will make his inauguration as a northerner in the south even more difficult than ever after almost 10 years of hot and cold war.

As his troops, backed by United Nations troops and French helicopter gunships and jets, move further into Abidjan, two recent events have raised the stakes hugely. The surrounding of the residence of Laurent Gbagbo, the previous president who has refused to step down, was a significant victory and the rest of Abidjan, the country's largest and most important city, may soon fall into Ouattara's hands. But the sight of French helicopters and jets over the city, and UN forces killing Ivorians in support of Ouattara's own Forces Nouvelles, will help fuel Gbagbo's propaganda which depicts the whole peace process and last year's election as a French-led international conspiracy to deprive him of the presidency and hand the country over to French imperialists and colonialists.

Secondly the massacre of some 800 people in Duékoué at Carrefours to the west of the city earlier this week – apparently by anti-Gbagbo forces – will also cast a shadow over Ouattara's victory. His spokesman denied that the massacre was carried out by his forces but it is still unclear who committed the atrocity against the local Guere people. There are three possible culprits. One is that the murders were carried out by recent settlers from other parts of the country or from neighbouring countries who had bought land under previous governments but been dispossessed by Gbagbo's anti-foreigner Ivorianisation programme. Living as squatters nearby, they may have decided on revenge. The killings were described by locals as a "settling of scores". The second is that a militia made up of exiled Liberian fighters committed it. Stateless, dehumanised and drugged, the jetsam of Liberia's long civil war are guns for hire. Perhaps paid or simply taking advantage of the chaos of war, they blasted their way through the area on their way into the city to loot, rape and pillage. The third is that they were indeed paid by Ouattara or his allies. Carrefour is a rough area and the home of one of the nastiest pro-Gbagbo militias.

Whatever the truth, people will believe what they want about the massacre. The decision by Ouattara to forgo further diplomacy and cease to rely on international sanctions to bring Gbagbo down may give him the presidency but it will make it hard for him to bring peace to the country. This will need a comprehensive and lengthy peace and reconciliation process to restore what was once the wealthy, stable jewel of Francophone Africa.